Linguists have long recognized the desirability of embedding a theory of grammar within a theory of linguistic performance (scc, e.g., Chomsky (1965;10-15)). It has bccn widely assumed by transformationalists that an adequate model of a language user would inchlde as one component some sort of generative granlm:.~r. Yet transformational grammarians have devoted relatively little energy to the p...

This paper explores specific issues concerning linguistic theory and the use of simplicity criteria in the early Transformational Generative Grammar literature. In particular, the influence of Nelson Goodman and Willard Van Orman Quine upon the work of Noam Chomsky during the 1950s is assessed. The main topics considered include the development of constructional system theory, the use of mechan...

A number of recent research efforts have explicitly grounded parser design on linguistic theory (e.g., Bayer et al. (1985), Berwick and Weinberg (1984), Marcus (1980), Reyle and Frey (1983), and Wehrli (1983)). Although many of these parsers are based on generative grammar, and transformational grammar in particular, with few exceptions (Wehrli (1983)) the modular approach as suggested by this ...

What makes a language a natural language? A longstanding tradition in generative grammar holds that a language is natural just in case it is learnable under a constellation of auxiliary assumptions about input evidence available to children. Yet another approach seeks some key mathematical property that distinguishes the natural languages from all possible symbol-systems. With some exceptions f...

Various restrictions on transformational grammars have been investigated in order to reduce their generative power from recursively enumerable languages to recursive languages. It will be shown that any restriction on transformational grammars defining a recursively enumerable subset of the set of all transformational grammars, is either too weak (in the sense that there does not exist a genera...

We propose that similarity judgments are inferences about generative processes, and that two objects appear similar when they are likely to have been generated by the same process. We present a formal model based on this idea, and suggest that it may be particularly useful for explaining high-level judgments of similarity. We compare our model to featural and transformational accounts, and desc...

In the tradition of transformational grammar, the term ‘(grammatical) construction’ has been a theoretical taboo at least since the 1980s. It was then that Chomsky argued that transformations like ‘passive’ and ‘raising’, common in earlier versions of transformational grammar, should be eliminated in favor of general conditions on structures that would allow a single operation – ‘Move NP’ – to ...

This general review of language learning theory focuses on criticism of the audiolingual method of instruction which reached its peak in the mid-1960's. Recent trends in teaching methodology, supported by linguistic theories developed by transformational-generative linguists, are examined. Various models of learning are discussed which lead to a listing of practical applications of the emergent...

1. Introduction. Theoretical Assumptions and Aims 1.1 In the present paper, we attempt to compare two simultaneous descriptions of natural language with a view to semiotic questions. The linguistic theories we have chosen to this end are, on the one hand, the standard theory of transformational grammar (TG), formulated in the mid-1960's by Noam Chomsky, and, on the other hand, an early version ...

1. PETmCK considers transformational grammars (T-grammars) of a special* form which essentially have the properties described by N. CHOMSKY (1965). a) The base grammar is context-free. One recursive element S is distinguished. The base trees in general have the form s s or in linear notation Consequently each base tree consists of a finite set of subtrees or kernel trees each of the form S(@ $1...